


Home Is Where The Heart Is

by Hankenstein



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Background FemShep/Kaidan, Christmas, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:19:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2857190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hankenstein/pseuds/Hankenstein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A Christmas gift for <a href="http://eleneripenneth.tumblr.com"> Eleneri </a>, who <a href="http://eleneripenneth.tumblr.com/masseffectfanficjamesandjack"> wrote the bible </a> on James and Jack, as far as I'm concerned.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Home Is Where The Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> A Christmas gift for [ Eleneri ](http://eleneripenneth.tumblr.com), who [ wrote the bible ](http://eleneripenneth.tumblr.com/masseffectfanficjamesandjack) on James and Jack, as far as I'm concerned.

**Post War. Armstrong Nebula, Hong System, Planet Casbin.**

**_Alliance Forward Base_ **

“Hey meathead.” This basically passed for affection these days from Jack.

“ _Chica_.” James looked up from the console. He’d been finishing up a report on their mission. Jack probably would have made one of her students do it, a combination of laziness and an artful eye for teaching moments, but James wasn’t the kind to delegate when he could just do it himself.

Almost like his leadership mentor of choice, really.

Jack tossed a duffel into the corner of the pre-fab office-cum-quarters with a godawful clunking noise. What on Earth was she  _carrying_  in there?

He finished off the report, signed off with his credentials to authorize the priority buoys, and sent it.

He spun his chair to face Jack, and she caught one large arm in her hand and practically hauled him onto his feet for a kiss. He smiled into her mouth, almost cracking their teeth together in the process, but it was like that; messy and potentially ruinous, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“How were the  _niños_  with their field training today? Ready to save the universe?” He pulled back, big arms still encircling her shoulders, and she smirked up.

“Ready to destroy worlds, more like it.”

“Like their mama.”

Jack made a derisive  _psssht_  noise as she pulled away, seemingly using all her lips and teeth in it, but James had sharp eyes, and could see the smile sneaking through.

“What’s the word?” she asked over her shoulder, kneeling down to start flinging belongings out of the day bag and somehow managing to be unclipping and shedding her clothes at the same time. “I’m sweating like a fucking pig. Fuck this jungle shit.”

“The region’s stable, thanks to us,” he said, ignoring the comments on the heat. He was trying not to think about it. “Cerberus presence is at a zero. We’re too close to the Traverse to just ditch out until colonists and their Alliance detail arrive though. Still too vulnerable to Batarians or hell, for Cerberus to just come back.” He instinctively picked up the jacket that she tossed near his feet, neatly folding and stowing it before he could be swamped in Jack’s clothing.

Jack sighed. “So, baby sitting duty to go along with my baby sitting duty?”

James smiled at her tone, so put-upon and beleaguered as she precisely, with more care than given to any of her own belongings, extricated a stack of data pads, undoubtedly belonging to her squad, and placed them on the desk.

“You know it,  _chica_. At least two months.”

She stood from her crouch, lips curving into that most gorgeous of sly smiles as she glanced around their shared space, already military neat despite her best whirlwind of effort.

“Well, with you to pick up after me like that, I suppose I’ll survive it. Neat freak.”

“Trash compactor,” he countered easily, smiling.

“Choir boy.”

“You haven’t even heard me sing,” he shot back, and caught her easily in his arms again as she went to move past his bulk. “And hey, I confirmed the order for them to ship us back home for a week. Spectre’s orders.” He grinned wickedly as he said it, though the rise of his smile seemed to be the slow descent of hers.

“Why?” she asked suspiciously.

James paused before replying, still holding her so lightly in his arms. The barest pressure from Jack and those arms could give way, room to take flight if she needed, if she ever so much as wanted. It was how she needed to be held, and James knew it.

“For Christmas. I thought I told you. Shepard and the Boy Scout invited us to come spend it with them.” If he’d hoped using Jack’s own personal nickname for Kaidan might smooth the line that was deepening between Jack’s perfect brows, he was wrong.

“Home? Back to Earth?” she muttered, James’ grip melting as he felt her pull out of his arms.

“To Vancouver, right? It’ll be fucking freezing,” she said, half turning away.

“I think that’s the point,” he said softly.

Loving Jack was like walking a minefield sometimes, and he’d gotten damned good at navigating it, or so he thought. He still managed to be surprised sometimes, and he was surprised here, to see the edge of one such mine peeking through the dirt.

“For a week? What a- what a waste of eezo,” she snapped at him.

James never claimed to be a smart man, though the N7 on his uniform just starting to look nicely worn in might have belied that, because he blurted his next response, a step barely measured, not looking out for that mine beneath his big booted foot. “But it’s Christmas.”

“Then I’m going to spend it here, with the students.”

“Jack-“

“I’m sure you’ll have a great time,” she responded shortly, and it didn’t take a smart man to read  _conversation_   _over_  in the line of her narrow shoulders, the accompanying piercing glare up through thick lashes and perfect brows.

And because James knew there was nothing waiting on the other side of those brows if pushed other than an explosion, he dropped it, nodding slightly.

She tugged him down into an embrace, wiry arms over his shoulders. Her fingers slipped upwards, tingles spreading from the sensation on the broad column of his neck and over the line of his hair. This was how they spoke, sometimes, though it was a language that had taken time for James to learn.

Jack offered her apology in the best way she knew. “You’re getting shaggy, soldier boy.” Pulling back, she glanced up at him and ran diagnosing hands over the sides of his head. “Want a shave?”

“If you say so,  _chica_ ,” he responded easily, taking her apology in gentle hands and sealing it with a kiss.

It was just a chaste kiss. But it lingered a moment longer, and suddenly there was the wet press of her lips, parted against his.

James felt his breath catch in almost a growl, and there was a ripple of taut muscle beneath his hands as she took all of her weight around his shoulders, neatly wrapping her legs around his waist as she practically jammed her tongue into his mouth.

That the energy could change so fast from suspicion to crackling, snapping arousal, James’ hands cupping her ass easily through the rough fabric of her pants, was no surprise and meant nothing; Even at their worst, scrapping, raw, terrifying, the sex was always good. It was a language they both spoke, a dance they’d always seemed to know to since that first sweaty romp in Shepard’s old apartment.

Jack nuzzled her face into James’ neck, teeth searching and nipping there, and his plans of pressing her back into the cool of the wall had to take a backseat as he felt his knees wobble at her attention

“You’ve been hanging out in a nice cool office all day and I stink like sweat,” she muttered into his skin.

“Never bothered you before,” he teased roughly.

She growled,  _squeezing_  her thighs around his waist and bit him again on the neck, properly this time.

“Ow!” he exclaimed, laughing as he turned and dumped her bodily on the bed. He’d once thought her something frail, easily broken into sharp shards like spun glass. Every day with her was another day to realise how wrong he could be.

James followed her down, weight creating valleys in the bed, one knee between hers, kissing down the hollow of her throat, over her sternum and the thin fabric of her bandage shirt.

Resourcefulness might have gotten her on the Alliance payroll, but nothing could get her into Alliance issue clothes.

“You know,” he murmured between kisses, “one of the benefits of this whole command thing,” he felt her melt against the bed and his mouth, “is that there’s a shower  _right there_.” He licked, tongue rough and wet against the line of her hip, his vision filled with black lines. She  _did_  taste like salt and sweat and exertion, the climate controlled quarters not enough to rob her skin of the scent of the day. James didn’t give a shit.

“Right,” she replied, too distracted by his lips on her for even a smart ass comment about how she’d been sharing his quarters since they first landed.

“But we’re gonna have to get you out of these clothes, no?” he said, fingers already working over the buckles of her pants with practiced ease.

“You too then, boy.” She sat up breathlessly, hands seeking the hem of James’ tee, tangling their arms on the bed as she gripped it and pulled it over his head.

“Me? I don’t need a shower,” he said innocently.

“Well, you’re gonna by the time I’m done with you. So we might as well streamline this shit.” She pushed him to standing, kissing him thoroughly once more, and backing him up into the little cubicle.

James laughed into her mouth, trying to toe out of his boots as he walked backwards. With all of Jack’s peculiarities, and her moments where she confused him deeply, he never for a moment regretted loving her.

***

“Hey, Rodriguez.” Jack nodded to the cadet the next day. Though  _cadet_  wasn’t right, not anymore. Solider. Veteran. Jack frowned at the thought.

Rodriguez perched atop a crate, crammed into the slice of shade cast by one of the prefab buildings. The girl ( _woman_ ) nodded back to Jack, eyes cast over the students as they dispersed from the day’s training exercises.

They’d lost a few in the war, of course, and gained a few after, though vets outnumbered the casualties, thank goodness. Between the population decimation of the Reaper War, and the increased proliferation of eezo, there seemed there seemed to be a surplus of young biotics with no one left, and nowhere else to go.

There were better off with Jack than anywhere else in the universe.

The students had provided back-up admirably for clearing the mercs out of the area, but just because the threat was no longer imminent didn’t mean training stopped. Jack had seized the opportunity to utilize Casbin’s climate, talk about how the heat effected metabolism, field density, and how cluttered landscape wreaked havoc on a field. It came naturally to Jack. Jungle was all too familiar.

Jack boosted herself up easily to perch next to Rodriguez, joined her in watchfulness over the kids as they congratulated each other for surviving the day, chugging water and heading back to the barracks.

“How’s the Commander?” Rodriguez asked, deadpan.

Jack tilted her head. Apparently this was what living through a war and a half together got you. Insubordination.

“Shut up,” she replied warmly.

“Saw on the duty roster he’s leaving for week. And… you’re not?”

“That’s right.” Jack said carefully.

Rodriguez wiped a sheen of sweat from her brow where it determinedly sprouted right back up again.

“Would I be correct in assuming that he’s going back to Earth for Christmas?”

“You would be correct.” And it was a sign of times past and battles won together that Jack didn’t create a biotic mouth to bite the young woman’s head right off there and then, but instead just watched her warily as Rodriguez wound her way round to her point.

“Any reason you’re not going with?”

“Because it’s dumb,” she snapped. “He’s not even that religious. Neither is Shepard.”

Rodriguez did something that looked awfully like steeling herself, and plowed ahead. “It’s not… it’s not really about religion, though, is it?” She was past the point of letting Jack lie to her, or lie to herself.

Jack sighed, and leant her head back against the building behind her. It was hot, and she was too tired to fight. Besides, this was Rodriguez.

“Bad memories?” the younger woman ventured. “I know me and mine- it was never exactly a good time. My dad… anyway.” She pressed her lips together.

“Not bad memories, no.” Jack said. “Just… he called it “home.””

Rodriguez didn’t say anything.

“”Ship back home for Christmas,”” Jack said, almost to herself, and she tried not to sound bitter. It tasted wrong in her mouth. Anger was so much sweeter.

Rodriguez made a noise of understanding, back in her throat, like Jack had spoken volumes. And really, she had.

“Well, I don’t want to overstep,” she said self-deprecatingly, and Jack brayed out laughter, because the time had well and truly passed, “But it seems like you two have a good thing going on. Maybe you should ask him about it.”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed, mouth twisted, a confusion of emotions roiling through her.

***

Jack found James in the building that served as the base’s armory. He had people to do it for him now, but it was still a safe space for him, the gaps where he fit in between each plate and piston of his rifle.

She watched from the door for a moment, the flex and play of musculature under his tee, the triangle of sweat at his lower back a constant companion since they’d landed. He was beautiful. She didn’t need to tell him that, of course. He knew.

“Hey.” She clambered up and sat crossed legged on the space left empty on the bench, almost like it was waiting for her.

“Hey,” he said softly, eyes not shifting from his work. They didn’t spend their days in each other’s pockets, or all over one another. They couldn’t, anyway, between Jack’s students and James’ command, and they wouldn’t have anyway. Such a relationship would never suit.

So she sat, and watched him work, quietly soothed by the repetitive motions as she worked up the courage to ask something. Christmas didn’t and never meant much to her. Aside from the whole “grew up in a rogue science facility as a lab rat” thing, she had always been a spacer. First time she set foot on Earth was during the War. Earth dates, earth traditions… she never really gave them much thought.

James though? James was an Earth kid. Down to his sunny Californian bones.

“Tell me what the deal with this Christmas thing is.” Jack had meant it to sound curious, but it got diverted through her “aggressive” filter instead. She resisted the urge to smack her hand to her forehead.

“It’s… it’s fine,  _chica_. You don’t want to come. I get it,” he said, sounding wounded.

“I’m not- fuck.” She practically folded in half at the waist, hands over the back of her head and growled in frustration at the bench. “Gimme a break,” she muttered to herself.

James just ignored her. If she wasn’t actively yelling at  _him_ , he knew she’d work it out and get back to him eventually.

“I meant it. I want to know what the… what it means. Why you’re willing to travel literally across the galaxy to drink custard and hang tinsel off your dick or whatever the fuck you do for Christmas.”

James snorted. He couldn’t help it. He glanced at her, and saw open and genuine curiosity in her face, even if sometimes the things that came out of her mouth managed to sound like knives.

He took his time in responding. Jack was settled and he still had work to do. Neither of them were running off anywhere soon.

“It’s not… I mean, I want to tell you it’s about family or something. Like, paint you some perfect picture. But you know that’s not how it was.”

Jack said nothing.

"But it’s just… it makes people better, you know? It makes people try, to do right by each other, maybe do something nice, for just one day. And maybe nothing really worked like it was supposed after Ma died, but at least on Christmas people _tried_.”

James paused, omni tool whirring quietly.

"And now… there are so few people left to try  _for_. But Shepard, she’s giving it a shot. And I’ll try for her.” He pressed his lips together and looked up at Jack. He said he wasn’t going to do this, but the words slipped out anyway. “I’d like to have you there.”

That all sounded very sweet, and dumb, just like Jack had thought.

However hard she might have clamped it down, an unbidden thought swirled to the surface. Jack thought about Shepard, the sight of the Commander when Jack burst out of that cryopod, and instead of jamming her back in, Shepard offered Subject Zero a hand and a bed and the chance to say no.

Jack stared at James, through James, who seemed content to work sure hands over his gear, and ignore the young woman sitting cross legged beside him.

Jack thought about the Normandy. More specifically, about leaving it, dumped on some backwater after the Alpha Relay. Jack’s mouth curved downwards as she thought about walking  _off_  that ship, knowing it had somehow become more than just a ship, and that you couldn’t find what she’d found there on just any hunk of metal. Was that… was that what James was talking about? That thing, that was bigger than the Normandy, but somehow fit so neatly inside it?

He was talking about  _home_  again, wasn’t he. Something inside her bent, and rebelled against the thought, like only Jack knew how.

But it was dumb, and if he was talking about home, it… meant things. It meant a creating a unit, creating that space again, another Normandy but just a tiny one, made of her, and James, and she wasn’t sure if she could handle that… or more importantly, handle walking away from it, when the time eventually came.

So many thoughts, and memories crowding and clamouring her brain.

“Yeah. I getcha,” was all she said. “I- I’m still not coming though.”

James nodded slowly. He looked up from the pieces of his rifle and met her eyes, and he accepted it.

***

James got up early the day he was due to ship back to Earth. He slipped out of bed. They’d said their goodbyes last night, and knowing Jack, any happiness she’d get from another goodbye would be cancelled out by being awake. Anyone who thought Jack might be softened by sleep was dead wrong. She was less like a peaceful nymph and more like a snoring bear, sprawled flat on her back and letting out a small but constant grating noise. He spared a single look at her before he walked out.

They hadn’t spoken much more about the Christmas thing aside from travel and command logistics. He didn’t ask her to come with him again, and she didn’t have to refuse.

He did quick rounds of the base. He had a short meeting with his Lieutenant, a capable woman named Suez, who’d be Acting Commander in his absence. Everything was looking perfect and Vega wasn’t expecting trouble, but it couldn’t hurt to be thorough.

“We’ll keep it tidy for you, Commander,” she farewelled, saluting.

“Oh, and don’t let Jack give you any shit.” James returned the salute. He didn’t even let his mouth twist, his face change. He’d miss her, more than he could say. The thought of breaking bread with Shepard, Kaidan and any of the old crew they’d managed to round up,  _without Jack,_  made his heart ache in a way he hadn’t been sure was possible before.  
But you couldn’t push Jack. You could never ask more than what she was willing to give, and he accepted that. Or at least he had to keep telling himself that he did.

“Yessir, understood. Take no shit,” Suez responded, deadly serious.

James’ lips might have twitched a little at that. They’d be fine without him.

He trekked out to the shuttle LZ, bag slung over his shoulder, even the morning air already thick with humidity.

He rounded the last prefab, lost in thought, and felt his fingers slip on the strap of the bag as he saw Jack, his Jack, framed by the open door of the shuttle, duffel at her feet, arms crossed over her chest.

“Here’s the thing,” she started, before he could open his mouth.

"I didn’t want to make a big deal about it. Some.. some dumb Earth holiday, right?"

He slowly closed the distance between them, heart hammering in his chest in excitement, and laid his bag at her feet as she spoke.

"Just another thing that the poor little experiment never got, right?"

James understood the cadence of her words far too well to think she was looking for a response. His mind was racing wildly out in front of him, already figuring out the thrust of her words, the meaning of her presence here by the shuttle, and the rest of him was slowly catching up.

"But then I thought if I hung out here bitching about it, that would be making a _bigger_  deal of it.”

"Jack… you don’t have to explain."

"I know I don’t," she said, frustration edging into her voice. "But I’m gonna." Where once such words might have been accompanied by a biotic pulse, a pop like a light globe, her words were harsh but everything else under a tight grip of control.

_That’s my girl,_  James thought suddenly.

"So I sorted it out, right? The kids’ll be fine. Rodriguez has got ‘em." She carried on, more softly. "It’s not that I’ve got like… bad memories or anything. About Christmas. It’s worse than that. I’ve got  _no memories_  at all. So I thought… maybe I could make some.” Like dredging up the words from some great depth, she finished with a grimace. “With you.”

James couldn’t remember when he started kissing her, arms wrapping tight around her shoulders, her feet almost lifting. Every piece of sticky sweaty skin against hers was a joy, mouth full of her lips.

James was kissing her so hard he was dizzy, mouth tasting of sweat and Jack and his heart felt fluttery against his sternum, like it was trying to break out of his chest and into hers.

He stepped back, and swallowed the determined lump in his throat

"Anyway." Jack cleared her throat, flushed. She stooped and picked up her duffel.

"Yeah,” he agreed. “I mean- Anyway.” He rushed to pick up his bag, nearly tripping over his feet in joy, suddenly feeling boyish with the thrill of it all, that holiday excitement. Without a thought, he slipped his free hand around Jack’s.

“Let’s go home for Christmas.”


End file.
